In a sufficiently parallel universe, Moldova would be the Napa Valley. There are vineyards and grapevines everywhere, and the area is famous for its wine and brandy. The country is a pretty green landscape of rolling hills and forest, in a mild climate tempered by the nearby Black Sea. The local produce is better than the expensive heirloom varietals you would find at a Northern California farmers' market, possibly because it is intensively cultivated by hand on small plots. Strawberries, for example, are ugly as sin, go bad in a day, and taste better than any I've ever found in the United States. Sour cherries transport me back to early childhood visits to my grandfather's large orchard, which was similarly run on hand labor and lacked expensive Western techniques for making fruit beautiful and durable*.

Moldova also has a perfect location, sitting midway between the Carpathian mountains and the Black Sea, scenic places that are full of hot springs, therapeutic mud, and have been attracting European tourists and convalescents for centuries. If not for the baneful roads and resentful Transnistrians, both Odessa and Iași (Romania's second city) would be an hour's drive away from the Moldovan capital. It's possible that the country could benefit from a small name change - "Moldova" doesn't sit well on many foreign ears, especially when you start in with derived company names like "Moldtrans" and "Moldcell" - but otherwise the conditions are perfect for yuppie tourism. Even the old regional flag is awesome:

Instead, of course, Moldova is the poorest country in Europe. After 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, trade collapsed and the most industrialied region in Moldova (the strip of land east of the Dniestr) seceded to form its own unrecognized nation. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that Moldova returned to the economic output of its last years under Soviet rule, and per capita income is $650 - five times less than Albania. The country suffers the ususal constellation of Second World symptoms: bad infrastructure, rural poverty, weak and corrupt government, a kleptocratic political system, and large numbers of people forced to leave the country to find work, often in terrible conditions.

Moldova sits atop Romania like a liver sits atop a stomach. The relationship between the two countries has involved a certain amount of bile. You arrive in Moldova from Romania by crossing a little river called the Prut, without many outward signs that you are in a different country. There is no difference in language or culture between the people on either side of this river, although the Soviet Union went to enormous lengths to try and foster a Moldovan national identity disjoint from Romania, to the extent of not telling people the language they spoke was Romanian.

The province of Romania adjoining the country is also called "Moldova", and the two Moldovas are the halves of what used to be an independent kingdom during the Middle Ages. In those times, anybody with a horse, a pointy stick in his hand, and a song in his heart would at some point try to invade the territory. Moldavian kings became adept at pitting various combinations of Hungarians, Turks, Poles, Cossacks, Wallachians and Tatars against one another in order to drive these invaders off while preserving their independence.

In this, they were pretty much successful until the early 19th century, when Russia fought a war against the Turks and annexed the eastern half of Moldavia to its growing empire. Except for a brief interval between the world wars, this territory stayed under Russian control until the fall of the Soviet Union. This difference in historical trajectories, along with the sizable Russian minority that moved to Moldova during the period of Russian rule, is what prevents Romania and Moldova from seeking unification today.

The Russian influence is particularly strong in the capital city, Chișinău. My first impression of the city was strongly colored by the fact that I had been living in Romania for many weeks without speaking the language. In Chișinău, my world acquired subtitles. Street names, signs, billboards, newspapers, flyers, conversations in the street, everything was suddenly in Russian, and therefore comprehensible. I fell in love with the city immediately.

Chișinău has the kind of modern history that makes you want to crawl back into bed and not come out for a while. At the start of the 20th century, it was a predominantly Jewish city. Nearly half the population were Jews, with a mixture of Moldavians, Russians and Ukrainians making up the rest. When the Russians capitulated during the First World War, the city along with the rest of the province decided to join Romania. It remained Romanian for twenty two years, until the Soviet Union annexed Moldova under the terms of a secret pact with Hitler. Less then six months later, a strong earthquake severely damaged the city. And six months after that, Romanian armies allied with Germany poured over the border to demolish what was left, murdering Jews and Roma as they went.

The city was retaken in 1944 by the Red Army, and Moldova again became a part of the Soviet Union. But the good times weren't over. in 1946, there was a famine (in a country where you can't drop your lunch on the ground without accidentally growing a crop!) due to Stalin's efforts to wipe out the richer peasants as he had previously done in Ukraine. By the time it was all over, the province was severely depopulated, and over the next decades many Russians and new settlers would come in, leading to the ethnic distribution you see in Moldova today: Russian cities, Moldovan countryside.

In rebuilding Chișinău, some anonymous genius had the good sense to order trees planted along every major road. There is nothing 1950's Soviet architects could throw at a city that a sufficient number of big trees haven't been able to neutralize. The trees form a beautiful leafy canopy down each block, and along the main street, Stefan Cel Mare, there is even a double row down either side, creating a pleasant and airy tunnel effect on the sidewalk.

Enjoying your time in Chișinău, like other places in the former Soviet Union, depends on the appropriate setting of expectations. A visitor unfamiliar with the Soviet hotel experience, for example, might enter the Hotel Cosmos with the same mixture of feelings Dante experienced as he boarded the ferry that would take him to Hell. All the standard elements of advanced socialist hospitality are present and conspire against the senses: massive concrete exterior, dim lobby, that strange hallway smell that permeates hallways from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, and a certain ammoniac harshness to the bright blue tile bathroom, occupied by a coarse toilet paper roll with no tube in the middle and several strips of cheap newsprint that have been placed across toilet, sink and shower drain, proclaiming the Russian word DISINFECTED in sickly blue ink.

The visitor willing to overlook such superficialities would find himself in a jewel of a hotel. The Cosmos has that great rarity - a competent, friendly staff - and the rooms are clean, comfortable and actually seem to have been DISINFECTED. There is hot water round the clock, room service, cable TV, and in certain rooms even such gems of old product design as the Mayak radio or Latvian rotary phone. And please take a look inside the minibar (the full-size refrigerator standing unplugged in the corner of the room):

  1 bottle red wine
  1 bottle white wine
  1 bottle champagne
  500 mL cognac
  500 mL vodka
  500 mL "Chișinău" beer
  1 carton orange juice

That is nearly four liters of booze, replaced nightly. I am sure if you make a significant dent in it, they bump your quota.

Tell me how it is possible to stay in a place like this and not enjoy each day of your stay, descending in the mornings into the quiet breakfast room to eat pale pink sausages fished out of a chafing dish, with a hearty spoonful of buckwheat and a hot cup of Nescafé. I wanted nothing more than to stick around and wander the Moldovan capital, but I had already booked my trip to Odessa, and Chișinău would have to wait.

* Class issues in food production bug me. Specifically, it bugs me that industrialized farming techniques that have made farmers in the West relatively wealthy have also stripped most of the flavor out of common foods (see: chicken, pork, tomatoes, apples). It additionally bugs me that natural-tasting fruit is now either a luxury product for the rich (see: Whole Foods), or an unintended side-effect of widespread rural poverty in places like Moldova. It is nearly 2010; we should not need to seek out adjectives like "heirloom", "organic", "artisanal" in front of fruits and vegetables in order for them to have some kind of identifiable flavor. We should also not have to choose between widespread exploitation of small farmers and mechanized cultivation on industrial scales that eliminates an entire rural culture of family-owned farms. It is important that we find a way to turn Eastern Europe into Vermont rather than Nebraska. Already the ham is starting to suck.

At some point in late April, the countryside in northeastern Romania explodes in bright crayon green leaves, the cats all come out to lounge in the sun, and the hatching of a million mosquitoes tells the world that spring has arrived. Suddenly the streets are full of Romanian youth in their faux-hawks and colorful Puma sneakers, looking for all the world like little San Francisco hipsters. It is a good time for a road trip.

The straight-line distance between Iași and Odessa is 247 kilometers, and there's not much in the way of natural obstacles - just a couple of small rivers and low rolling hills. In more innocent times, I would have expected to find a cozy regional train, or maybe an Argentine-style bus service that would feed me a steak dinner while covering the distance in a comfortable three hours. But after a couple of months in the region, I knew better. Fortified with maps, dramamine, two passports, and my trademark sunny disposition, I climbed aboard a bus to Iași and tried not to worry.

Few parts of the developed world embrace the motto “you can't get there from here” with the enthusiasm of the old Soviet Bloc. Under advanced socialism, border crossings even between fraternal nations were never really encouraged. There was the understanding that if you really needed to cross a border, you would pour over it with armored divisions. And there was little reason for trade between the satellite states when their goods could more usefully be sent directly to Russia. The massive changes since 1989 have made the old borders far more permeable, but they haven't done much for the infrastructure. The train cars may be new, but they still run on a 1983 timetable. And no one has the budget to even contemplate building new roads, when the old ones need so much help adapting to the sudden presence of actual cars.

So the eastern half of Europe is very poorly and strangely connected. Ljubljana is practically on the Italian border, but getting from there to Trieste (72 km) means a seven hour train ride, despite the lack of any border formalities. Suceava (Romania) is 40 kilometers from Chernivtsi (Ukraine), but there is at best one bus a day. Lviv to Kraków (390 km) requires a nine hour train ride, complete with a wheel change. Timișoara is 119 kilometers from Belgrade, but the one daily train takes a sleepy five hours to reach Belgrade after leaving Timișoara at 5 AM.

In the Balkans, things are even worse. Most of the Croatian coast is only accessible by air from western Europe, except in summertime. And if you want to go to Albania, it's probably easier to fly in from Italy than travel overland from any neighboring country.

In Iași I enjoy a pizza covered in the inevitable cașcaval (“tastes like velveeta, smells like feet!”*) and wander around the edge of town for a while. Every second store is a branch of some regional bank, a mysterious pattern common to all of eastern Europe. The central bus station is a large, empty lot surrounding a little sheet-metal roof and some benches. I am not confident that the maxi-taxi to Chișinău will be clearly labeled, and i don't speak enough Romanian to ask for help. But the gruff guy in the information kiosk sees me fretting and walks out to calm me down. “Vine, vine. Cinc minut!” ["it will get here in about an hour"].

If you think of Romania as a big round goldfish, Moldova is the remora that has attached itself to its back. There's no real geographical reason for the border between the two countries; rather, it's a historical artifact of old wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The two sides ended up drawing a line along a dinky little river called the Prut, surrounded on both sides by the same rolling landscape of dark earth and bright green fields. Like everywhere else east of the Carpathians, this is prime invadin' country.

The maxi-taxi to Chișinău is a big creaky van with soft seats. I am the fourth passenger, after an elderly Moldovan couple and a young woman up front who seems to be friends with the driver. Soon after leaving the city we pick up the first of many hitchikers, a smiling blond woman and two kids who look to be about thirteen. The kids are dressed in old muddy jeans. One of them has a pair of disintegrating sneakers completely covered in mud. They get out after a few miles, while the woman stays on.

Near the border the driver pulls over to tighten the lug nuts on each wheel - an ominous sign that I don't pick up on. The blond woman takes off running down a nearby dirt road, and we spend a long time waitng for her to come back, out of breath and apologetic, carrying a basket. The van is full of other cargo, notably several dozen bottles of tasty Borsec mineral water being taken to their fate in Moldova. I'm the only person with a suitcase.

We are met at the Moldovan border by Ann Coulter, looking dashing in a Soviet officer's cap, military jacket, black miniskirt and heels. For a moment I worry that I have taken something other than dramamine, and have wafted into some weird Republican fantasy. But the pseudo-Coulter turns her head and the resemblance fades. Her colleague is much more conservatively dressed, wearing full military uniform and the familiar expression of distaste common to border guards the world over. It is no fun being asked to do one's easy and well-paying job. I notice that the Moldovan border patrol is an enthusiastic contestant in the popular post-Soviet game, "who wants to wear the ugliest shade of green"?

Things have been tense lately between Moldova and Romania, but there is no unpleasantness at the border. We are pretty much the only people there. Coulter brings us back our passports, but before we can leave the security perimiter a grandma appears and knocks on the van door. She is selling filled pastries, kept warm through some kind of black magic.

The next two hours are unforgettable. It's not clear whether the roads are just more awful here than on the Romanian side, or if it's the driver's decision to go at full speed that's to blame, but everyone is bouncing all over the van. Luckily for me, the dramamine has kicked in and I feel no sense of motion sickness. Unluckily for me, the dramamine has kicked in and I am so drowsy that I fall asleep for a few seconds after each major bump, waking up only when my head whips around from the next one.

Every few minutes the van stops to admit or expel a hitchhiker. The protocol seems to be that you can flag down whatever passing bus or van you like, and it will stop and take you for a negotiated fee. After what seems like a very long time we bounce our way from open fields to the outskirts of Chișinău, and soon we are under a leafy canopy of trees, zipping around an old but pretty city. The last passenger hops out at the corner of a large park, and i figure it's a good time to make my own exit. I find myself standing in a beautiful, tree-lined street, next to a clean and beautifully maintained park. People are strolling along, all the signs are in Russian, and it isn't even raining anymore.

* I will one day have a lot to say about cașcaval, a.k.a kashkaval, a.k.a кашкавал, a.k.a. cacciocavallo. I have spent far too much time with this cheese of a thousand faces to leave it without comment. But revenge, unlike cașcaval, is a dish best served cold. [link]